


i loved you in the summer (the leaves were bound to change)

by hikaie



Series: i lay these eggshells to remember to be careful [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Magic, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4141749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaie/pseuds/hikaie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you.” Derek says, so quiet Stiles thinks he didn’t really hear it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i loved you in the summer (the leaves were bound to change)

**Author's Note:**

> Brief mentions of top surgery and hospitals, though it's very vague; there's really no detail to it.
> 
> This takes place after the night is shattered but before swallow, timeline wise for this verse?

It’s started to rain.

It _should_ be an altogether unsurprising fact, really; Stiles can’t recall a single span of more than a week in his entire short, miserable nineteen years in which it hasn’t rained for at least a day. Life in the Pacific Northwest has taught him a handful of very important, if boring, lessons: one, to _always_ keep an umbrella in the jeep; two, water comes out of clothes, mud doesn’t; and three, sometimes you just can’t avoid it no matter hard you try.

Nonetheless, it’s not an unsurprising fact because on Monday, it had rained too. And much like Monday, today the sky is crying fat droplets of gold and pink down onto the earth. The front yard is soggy, water running in dark rivulets down to the drains set off the sidewalk. The pothole in the street that’s been there for five years is full of murky, shimmering water.

They’re all really unsure as to what’s causing it, especially as _Stiles is the only one that can see it_. On Monday when he’d called Scott and gotten a prompt and sleepy groan of confusion, he’d discreetly taken a day to drive all-the-fuck-over and meet with his neurologist. But all his levels were good and nothing (other than the usual) was wrong with his brain. He hadn’t upped or lowered his dosage on any of his medications lately, either.

Today Stiles appreciates the beauty of it, if only because there’s not much else he can do. His dad passes by him at 8 a.m., fiddling with his belt buckle and his holster and throwing over his shoulder, “I’ll be working late.”

He sits on the porch for a while longer, nursing a cup of coffee that’s been getting colder and colder. The rain picks up, drumming on the roof with a force and a sound that lulls Stiles into a kind of early-morning calm that he hasn’t experienced in years.

So of course it has to end.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he regretfully fishes it out.

_Derek     10:43 AM  
House in 20_

He decides to walk; he takes the extra-large clear umbrella from the stand inside and stuffs his feet into garish and already mud-caked galoshes. The paths through the preserve will be a little troublesome but it’ll be worth it to watch the way the rain hits the top of the umbrella and sluices off of it in lines of pale-golden-pink. So, he ends up getting to the Hale house a little bit later than twenty minutes.

“Christ it’s fucking pouring out there.” Erica remarks when she opens the door. He shakes out the umbrella and leaves it on one of the chairs. “Derek’s being all broody and impatient.” She says in lieu of a greeting.

“What’s new?” He huffs. On top of all this rain bullshit, Derek hasn’t spoken to him since the incident two weeks ago. Incident being, he was grieving and they both got a little sappy and fucked like animals. (He may or may not have texted that exact phrasing to Derek after being ignored for three days. It earned him a stern emoji.)

“What took you so long?” Derek quips when he strolls into the dining room behind Erica. She slouches over to Boyd and sprawls across his lap, looking between her alpha and Stiles.

“I took a walk.” Stiles replies, calmly as he can muster. It’s not too hard. He just envisions violently punching Derek in his smug, beautiful fucking face and it helps him keep his voice level. (That’s all it’s ever been with Derek: fantasies of emotions that consume Stiles like a burning star, and then when he’d finally gotten a taste of something _real_ Derek had pulled back. Unable to handle the heat; unwilling.)

“In the rain?” Derek’s voice pitches down towards anger. But Stiles is not a disobedient beta. He’s not a disobedient anything; Derek told him to come to the house and he came. There was nothing specific in that text other than a time frame. And Derek is not his Alpha. Yet, he still feels a coil of shame in his gut.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Stiles rolls his eyes. “Does it look like I got, I dunno, marred by acid rain?” He claps at his face sarcastically.

“You sure look like you’re _on_ acid.” says Erica.

“I didn’t sleep well.” He squirms under the gaze of the three werewolves. “Anyway, what’d you need me for?”

Derek pushes a piece of paper across the table towards him. Stiles steps forward and pulls it forward with his forefinger and middle finger. “This is a copy of the border lines we drew with Satomi. I need you to enchant this.”

“Uh.” Stiles rolls the word out dumbly. “Dude, ask Deacon.”

“It has to be you.”

“Why, exactly?” Derek gives him a narrow-eyed look. Stiles knows as well as the rest of them that association is greater power is best option; it’s not the first time his act of playing dumb is seen through immediately by his supernatural peers. “But I’m Scott’s emissary?” He doesn’t miss the glance Derek shares with his betas before clearing his throat.

“It has to be you.” He reiterates, unhelpfully might Stiles add.

“Fine.” He swipes the paper off the table and peers at it warily. “What do you need me to do to it?”

“It needs to be resistant to fire. And water. Basically any damage. It’s part of the treaty, so I need it kept safe no matter what.” Stiles swallows thickly.

“Alright. I’ll have to get Lydia to help me.” He sets it back on the table. “Put it in the safe for now.”

Erica grabs for the paper and flounces off up the stairs.

“So you’re still seeing the rain then?” Boyd breaks the moment of silence. Stiles feels uncomfortable talking about this; the general pack reaction had not been stellar when they’d found out. He’d already spent the entire day running around before he’d told them and he still felt the anxiety they exuded in waves at his admission of seeing something no one else could see. Like, damn. Get possessed once and no one believes you at face value anymore.

“Yeah.” Stiles shrugs. “I don’t really think it’s anything bad, though? It’s kind of… peaceful. Calm.” As always, Boyd’s expression is inscrutable. Stiles used to flinch under that look; now he just looks away, towards Derek. Another broody asshole, but a terrible open book of a broody asshole.

“Boyd, will you leave us?” Derek says in a sigh.

As Vernon starts to rise, Stiles holds up his hand. Derek seems positively startled to see Boyd actually halt. “Don’t bother. I’m leaving.” He gives Derek a look: one he hopes conveys all the seething _fuckyouyoufuckingfuck_ that he feels inside, and turns on his heel to march out of the house. He feels eyes on him from the windows as he shoves his feet into his galoshes on the porch and tromps out into the dwindling rain.

* * *

 

_Stiles dreams of a dark road; sunbaked pavement steaming clouds of fog under headlights; a light drizzle of a rain pelting the wind shield. Dark, blobby shapes curl over the road in an almost encapsulating tunnel. Though, at some points, it thins out enough to see the cloudy pitch sky beyond, untainted by light pollution. Only stars twinkle when the branches and clouds part together at exactly the right moment._

_He drives without intention; his dreams are always lucid but he never knows where he is. Even when his eyes are glued to the dark mass of shapes outside the car, he stays on the long, winding road. The startling thickness of a presence makes him look over and he would wreck if he could at the sight of Derek in the passenger seat, giving him the fondest, most comfortable, open expression Stiles has ever seen on another human being._

_He_ wakes up, hand clamped tight between his thighs and he shakes and shudders into the pillow case and jerks his hand until he whines out Derek’s name.

* * *

 

Dad takes Stiles out to a diner that night, and they talk about top surgery. Stiles has been saving up for a while; he’s got allowances from when he was eight shoved into a piggy bank and checks from Grandma and Dad has a little set aside at the bank which makes Stiles tear up.

“You want Scott to come too?” Dad asks, poking idly at a salad. Stiles lets him forgo food for this conversation, just this once.

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “Maybe Lydia?”

“That sounds alright.” The rest of their meal passes in comfortable conversation.

* * *

 

Lydia helps him enchant the map that Friday. They anoint it with an odd kind of oil infused with mountain ash and chant over it for exactly ten minutes. In the end, Lydia throws a match on top of it and it just fizzles out, the paper untouched. Stiles smiles a little to himself; although his skills have progressed considerably over the past few years, it’s always surprisingly empowering for his spells to work out.

“Hey, Lyds.” He hovers by her as she collects her things from beside the door.

“Hm?”

“My surgery is on the 29th. Will you… I mean, can you come?”

She pauses, hand wrapped around the strap of her bag. “Yeah. Yes, Stiles, I’ll be there.” He smiles at this, too.

* * *

 

Derek comes to him on the porch that night. Stiles had said he’d come bring the map over tomorrow morning, and he should have known better. He quirks his eyebrow at the wolf.

“Willingly communicating with me now?” Derek is silent in response. Of course.

“Hold on, I’ll grab the map.”

“Don’t.” Stiles falls back into place in the deck chair, swallowing.

“Is there something wrong? Pack emergency?” He fumbles for his phone, sees no missed texts or calls. He turns his eyes on Derek. His expression- fuck, it punches Stiles right in the gut. Stiles lets out a sound, beside himself. It’s so much like his dream it makes his stomach ache.

Derek must hear the way his heartbeat changes or smell something on him. He steps forward and Stiles stands up and they just meet in height with Stiles on the porch and Derek on the grass and it makes Stiles’ fingertips tingle because Derek has to lean up to kiss him.

“You can’t.” Stiles whispers, and Derek pulls back. They share a breath, two. “You can’t do that to me, Derek. You have to-” Derek pulls away and Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. “You have to make up your mind.”

“I thought that was pretty clear.”

Stiles’ eyes flick open and he would find the way Derek flinches a huge accomplishment. “I know your past string of lovers have been fine with no-strings-attached but I’m different.” He swallows. “I thought _we_ were different.” He hates the way Derek looks straight at the bob of his throat over the last sentence.

“I love you.” Derek says, so quiet Stiles thinks he didn’t really hear it.

It begins to pour.

* * *

 

“You don’t have to keep taking my pain.” Stiles says in a wheedling voice that sounds nothing like he’s actually _trying_ to get Derek to stop.

“I know.” He shrugs his broad shoulders and keeps his left hand resting gently in Stiles’, curled on the side of the hospital bed. He doesn’t even look up from the newspaper he’s reading. Stiles smiles at him, and past Derek, out the window, it begins to rain, cool and crystal-clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles' emotions were influencing the rain, in case it wasn't clear enough.


End file.
